City plans to buy vacant building for neighborhood center

Old Griff's Restaurant building will also have job-training site for teens, adults

MADISON, Wis. — The long-vacant Griff’s Restaurant, on the city’s west side, has a new future after the common council approved a plan to buy the building.

The city will pay $469,000 for the building, which was Griff’s from 1993 until it closed in 2010.

The building will be converted into a neighborhood center and a job-training site for teens and adults.

“Surrounding Elver Park we have a large number of low- and moderate-income housing units,” Madison Alder Lisa Subeck said. “This is exactly the kind of facility we need to ensure that this neighborhood turns around.”

Subeck said the center will serve the surrounding neighborhoods well.

“It is the only piece of commercial property available at or very near the Park Ridge Neighborhood — one of our neighborhood’s that’s really been on the cusp and struggling,” Subeck said.

She said it took three years to hammer out a deal to buy the building, and it is set to open next year.